CHAPTER 4: USING YOUR UI TO AVOID TUNNEL VISION

USING YOUR UI TO AVOID TUNNEL VISION INTRO

Welcome to our course on avoiding tunnel vision with your UI. Do you suffer from tunnel vision?

Well, honestly you're not alone. It's the number one most common complaint for many players in WoW.

With so much going on in every game, it feels impossible to pay attention to everything all at once. Well luckily we developed a solution here.

We're going to be comparing your interface to the inside of a car, separating each UI element into different priority levels from low all the way to high. And if you watch this course from start to finish, you are going to know exactly where to look at any moment in Arena.

We hope you enjoy.

AVOID TUNNEL VISION AND INCREASE AWARENESS

Sometimes all it takes is doing just one thing to have a legendary moment. But more often than not, games require us to do many different things at the same time.

This is what truly makes them fun, and we live for the moments where someone is able to push their multitasking to its absolute limit. One of the biggest pain points for players in WoW is just how many things you need to pay attention to.

Fortunately, there are some really simple steps that you can take to increase your awareness. And we guarantee it's easier than you might think because it's just as simple as something else you do almost every day, and chances are you've probably been multitasking in other games your entire life.

So stick around because we're going to give you the definitive guide for beating tunnel vision in PvP. Starting off, it's easy to understand why PvP causes tunnel vision.

There are simply so many things to possibly look at that players get lost on where they should actually be looking. But at its core, there are really two separate elements to game awareness, which are your frames and the environment.

In many ways, learning how to use your UI properly is like learning how to drive a car. There are multiple things you need to be doing at any given time, and you change your attention based on what's going on around you.

Just like your car, some parts of your interface require your attention for the majority of the time. Other things you just need to keep in your peripheral vision in case something changes.

And finally, some things just need to be glanced at. So with that in mind, let's develop a priority system.

So let's start with the first one. The priority system is a system that allows you to know exactly where you should be looking at any given time.

LOW PRIORITY UI ELEMENTS

We will start off by looking at low priority UI elements. These are the places that newer players focus on and it's perhaps the biggest thing holding them back.

The most important element in your UI is your player frame, right? No!

Not at all! And by the end of this video you will realize that your player frame is probably one of the last places you will ever look in Arena.

That's because your player frame doesn't really add any information that you can't find anywhere else. Many inexperienced players just assume that the most important place to track your resources are by looking at your own frame.

But as we will discover, there are more efficient ways to gather the exact same information. Therefore, we highly recommend against looking at your player frame at all.

Neither should you fixate your attention on your action bars. Of course, that's where all of your abilities are, but not every ability matters all the time.

There are two categories of abilities, those with minor importance and those with major importance. Your minor abilities are the ones involved in your normal DPS or healing rotation.

These are the spells that you routinely press during encounters, or sometimes press outside of encounters, when you need to buff, mount, or drink, for instance. Major abilities are the ones you don't press nearly as often, in many cases because they have a long cooldown.

These include your offensive and defensive CDs, and things like trinkets and ability procs. You should almost never look at minor abilities on your bar.

Instead, you should focus on making your normal DPS or healing rotation as autopilot as possible. There's no quick way to do this, but instead this requires you to just play the game.

The more you can bake your rotation into something you can perform naturally or automatically, the better you will be at everything else. Your major abilities are really the only things that matter on your action bars.

Just like your player frame, though, you should avoid fixating on your action bar. Instead, you should spend a small amount of time, even fractions of a second, glancing at your action bar to gather useful information.

Like when an important cooldown will be ready. If you plan on playing offensive, or if you know the enemy team will be using their offensive CDs, a quick glance to your action bar is all it should take to know when your cooldowns will be available.

Just as a quick recap, both your player frame and action bars are some of the lowest prices, and you should be able to get a good look at your action bar. Each one of these requires quick glances to get information.

You should never fixate on these elements, but instead quickly gather information like glancing at your action bar, to see when an important cooldown will be ready, or checking your player frame to see your secondary resource.

NEUTRAL PRIORITY ELEMENTS

Next, we're going to go into the neutral priority elements of your UI. These things contain useful information, so you will be looking at them quite often.

The first element you will be paying close attention to is your target frame. The target frame is broken into four unique parts.

Resources, buffs, and debuffs, which we will call auras for short, target of target, and finally your target's cast bar. Out of all these parts, your target's health and mana are the least important to look at, since that information can be gathered quickly in other places.

Instead, by paying attention to the lower half of your target frame, you can quickly react to casts with interrupts or react to swaps by monitoring who your opponent is targeting.

Tracking buffs on your target is also important, and it's made much easier with an addon like big debuffs, which will automatically show the most important buff on your target's portrait. This includes offensive cooldowns like combustion, or even minor cooldowns like spell reflection and grounding totem.

Monitoring debuffs is also important, especially if you are a class with dots, since in order to maximize damage, you need to be able to use your skill to deal damage to your target. If you are a class with a lot of damage, you need to have high uptime on your damage over time effects.

But even outside of dots, knowing what debuffs your target has or doesn't have allows you to make more efficient decisions with your dps rotation. The target frame is also really good for chaining cc, which you often do on classes like rogue where you want to leave seamless gaps in between your stuns.

So by looking at your target frame, your attention should be split between their cast bar, their auras, and finally their target. Of course for targets that don't have interrupts, you don't really need to worry about their casts.

The target frame is really unique because in many ways it acts as a second target frame. Just like your target, your focus gives you three parts of useful information.

Resources, auras, and cast bars. But unlike your target, which you might swap frequently, especially as a healer, your focus target doesn't swap nearly as much.

This is because your focus is often a high priority target, one that you will want to keep tabs on and monitor occasionally. It's kind of like the side mirrors of your car.

You don't look at them every second you are driving. But instead, you occasionally glance at them.

You can't just glance over to them to pick up useful pieces of information when it matters. The focus cast bar is arguably the most important element of your focus frame, since monitoring it opens up a lot of counterplay.

For instance, any spec with an interrupt can use focus frame information to land focus interrupts while continuing their normal dps rotation on their main target. Healers also need to monitor focus casts.

Druids can focus mages in order to shift polymorph casts, shamans can focus targets in order to wind shear, and priests can focus targets in order to shadow ward death. All of these intermediate level outplays are made much easier with a focus frame.

Arena frames contain supplemental information for your target or focus. In a way, they are like having multiple focus targets, but with some additional important information like pvp trinkets and diminishing returns.

Intuitively it would make sense that arena frames would be the most important UI element to monitor in arena, but this really isn't the case. Arena frames are best used to gather information with quick glances, like checking DRs before going for CC.

Or deciding who to attack based on what trinkets are available. This is a very important element in arena frames.

It's a very important element in arena frames. It's a very important element in arena frames.

So unlike your target and focus frame, which you actually will pay more attention to, your arena frames are there just to give you compact pieces of information for the entire enemy team.

The only time where you will actively monitor arena frames is when you are trying to chain CC, especially when you have casted spammable spells like polymorph, fear, or cyclone. In these moments, it's ok to fixate on your arena frames because you want to be precise on when your CC is applied.

While also being quick to react to enemy dispels. Or even if you're not a pro at this, you can still be able to get a lot of damage from your CC.

Finally, wrapping up the last neutral priority section of your UI are your own buffs and debuffs.

Some classes have important procs that need to be monitored frequently, but just like your arena frames, you should avoid fixating on your buffs and debuffs and instead glance over to them occasionally to pick up useful information.

For instance, as a ret paladin, it might be useful to know how many stacks of reckoning you have so you can approximate when you will get a wings proc. It's also useful to look at the duration of some debuffs like damage over time effects if you are a class that can restell.

But generally speaking, you shouldn't be looking at your buffs often. Instead just glance over to them when you need to pick up important information.

Just as a quick wrap up so far, we started out with our lowest priority elements of your UI which included your player frame and your action bars which should only be quickly glanced at while playing.

We then moved into our neutral priority elements including your target and focus frames which are the first elements that you will actually pay prolonged attention to. Finally we discussed arena frames and personal auras, which again only require quick glances and are rarely things you should do.

You should actively look at them.

HIGH PRIORITY UI ELEMENTS

Now, let's go into the highest priority elements of your UI, starting with your raid frames. Remember how we said your player frame is probably the least important part of your UI?

The reason for that is because raid frames give you the exact same information as your player frame, plus more. Not only will your raid frames display your resources and important buffs and debuffs, but they will do so for your party members as well.

This makes your raid frames a high priority element of your interface, but not one that you should fixate on. Instead, one that you should constantly keep in your peripheral vision.

There's a special reason why many pro players keep their raid frames slightly offset to the center of their screen. This is because it keeps the frames in their peripheral vision, allowing them to stay focused on gameplay while being able to respond quickly to any peripheral changes on the raid frames.

The only players that need to actively monitor their raid frames are healers, and in a way, your raid frames are like your target frame as a healer. You are battling with the health bars of your teammates, reacting quickly to spikes in their HP as well as important debuffs.

Healers might need to monitor raid frames more than DPS, but that doesn't mean... DPS should ignore it entirely.

The same information that is useful to a healer when it comes to raid frames is equally as useful for DPS. For instance, if you notice your healer is stuck in a CC when glancing at their raid frame, this can signal to DPS that they might need to use a defensive.

For hybrids, monitoring raid frames often is quite important, since you can notice important dispellable debuffs on your partners, or you can off-heal if you see someone's HP start to spike.

For all players, there are times where you should more actively watch raid frames, like when the enemy team is on the right side of the screen, or when the enemy team is popping offensive cooldowns, especially when your healer is stuck in CC.

In these moments, watching raid frames will allow you to coordinate defensive cooldown usage with your team, and make better defensive decisions overall. Finally, we have one of the most important elements of any PvP UI in Shadowlands, and that is cooldown tracking.

Add-ons like Omnibar and Weak Auras have seen a surge in importance and popularity, as the game has become much more cooldown focused. Going back to our car example, cooldown tracking add-ons are like the brake lights, turn signals, and emergency signals, on the vehicles around you.

When you see these light up in front of you, you know that something will need to change. Many pro players keep their cooldown tracking either at the top or bottom of their peripheral vision.

Much like raid frames, seeing a sudden change in the peripheral allows you to react accordingly. For instance, when Weak Auras lights up in the top half of a player's screen, that signals an important change that requires an immediate reaction.

On the other hand, add-ons like Omnibar, which actively track ability cooldowns and not ability durations, allow you to both react to enemy offensives, but more importantly, plan for a good fight. This is important for them in the future.

For instance, if you see that an assassination rogue has their vendetta coming up in one minute, you know that you will need to reserve at least one major defensive cooldown as a response. Even though cooldown tracking is high priority, your Omnibar and Weak Auras are not elements that you should constantly stare at.

Instead, just like your raid frames, they often just require quick glances. If a Weak Aura lights up on your peripheral, or if you need to check your Omnibar for interrupts, this requires a super quick glance, gathering the information within a fraction of a second, and then resuming your attention to the game.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS

Your interface is only half of your attention in arena. Of course arena is not a static environment, it changes, and some important changes are only visible when you look away from your UI.

This presents an obvious problem. How can any player possibly pay attention to all of these elements of their UI while also being able to pay attention to the actual game?

The solution? Nameplates.

For all players, enemy positioning is by far the biggest environmental element you need to pay attention to. Nameplates are by far the best way to keep track of this.

Not only do they show you exactly where your opponents are positioned, but they also show their HP. And with addons you can track important buffs and debuffs, cooldowns, and even interrupts on enemy nameplates.

All of these things are neutral to high priority pieces of information that can be gathered by paying attention to nameplates while also allowing you to track enemy positioning.

This is why many players keep their camera angled towards the target they are attacking since when nameplates are enabled it keeps the relevant information in the center of your screen.

By utilizing enemy nameplates along with additional addons like big debuffs, nameplate cooldowns, or plater, you can transfer a lot of the information from other elements in your UI into one convenient location, giving you more focused awareness in the center of your screen.

In a way, this can replace the need for looking at your target frame. It condenses most of your target's information while keeping your vision focused where it matters the most.

And even though it frees up the need to look at your target frame, you still need to keep track of your focus frame since it's quite difficult to monitor every enemy nameplate at once. As an additional bonus, nameplates can be incredibly useful for your game.

If you're looking for a way to keep track of your target frame, you can use the focus frame to quickly track your target frame. It's also incredibly useful for reacting quickly to certain spells like grounding totem or war banner.

When these abilities are used, they create their own nameplate, which can quickly be clicked to snipe them down. While enemy positioning is important to keep track of, party positioning is almost equally as important, and is one place that many players struggle with.

While many party positioning problems can be solved with communication, the best workaround solution is raid icons, which should be set outside of arena before you enter the game. You should color coordinate your raid icons based on the class of your target frame.

You can also use them to create a map of your target frame. You can also use them to create a map of your target frame.

You can also use them to create a map of your target frame. You can also use them to create a map of your target frame.

They can always be set outside of your setting place, where the blue square can be set on mages, and the orange circle can be set on druid and so forth. These sieht icon act as pseudo nameplates for friendly players, and allow you to quickly track your party's positioning.

This is most important as healer, since you often are the one who needs to adjust your positioning in respect to your teammates.

You don't need to be looking at these raid icons the entire game, but in moments where you need to find your teammates quickly glancing for the unique colorful icons only takes a fraction of a second.

FIX YOUR UI

Wrapping up, let's go over the simplest fix to any tunnel vision problems, which is making sure you have a proper UI layout. One of the things we've mentioned throughout this video is that some UI elements require fixated attention, while others require peripheral attention or quick glances.

The most important parts of your UI should be as close to the center of your screen as possible, meaning your target, focus, and your cooldown tracking, since these things are what you should be looking at the most.

Other elements like your player frame, raid frames, arena frames, and auras should be on the perimeter of center screen. We'd generally advise against keeping these perimeter elements tucked away in the corner of your screen, since it will take you much longer to glance at them for information.

Keeping a clean UI with relatively centered frames is one of the easiest ways to instantly improve your tunnel vision, and it's no mistake that the best players in the world have UIs that follow these general principles. Take Mez, Trill, and Seedoo as an example.

All three of these players have relatively minimal UIs with the most attention. The most important elements being directly in the center of the screen.

Look, we have an entire video roasting UIs from lower rated players, and one of the most common similarities between them is poor UI spacing. Some players don't even have focus frame, while others have it tucked so far away that it makes it impossible to pay attention to.

AUTOPILOT YOUR ROTATION

We know we covered a lot in this video, but it's because tunnel vision is a complicated problem. Besides fixing your UI, one of the best things you can do is simply play the game more.

While that might not seem like the best advice, or maybe it seems too obvious, one of the most important steps for avoiding tunnel vision is making your rotation as automatic as possible.

The less you can think about what globe will depress next, the more you can devote attention to more important things like paying attention to interrupts, raid frames, and enemy cooldowns. If you're forced to think about your rotation, it's almost like you're causing yourself to lag.

So as a final tip, try and get to a point where you don't have to think about your next global. You can do this by playing arena, battlegrounds, or even something as simple as questing.

We know that tunnel vision is a super difficult problem to fix, but by becoming more comfortable with your damage rotation and realizing that you can use nameplates to condense important information, you can start making much better decisions in your gameplay.